Engineering, Economics & Coffee

Mickey Mouse & Post-It Notes

3M (the maker of Post-It notes among other things) is boosting its estimates for next year’s profits as well as revising this past year’s profits up. Apparently most of the gains come from their electronics and medical supplies businesses. Still, I’d like to think some of that comes with optimism about where their office supplies sales are expected to go. Maybe in the coming year more office supplies means more employed office workers as well.

In other positive economic news, Disney is upping their dividend by 50%. That’s a pretty serious increase. It definitely means they are positive about the oncoming year at least that they won’t need access to their cash reserves that they, like many other companies, have been hanging on to. It could mean though that like many other companies holding on to cash they just don’t know what to do with it. And growing their dividend is less risky than investing in new business ventures or hiring more people.

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3M is currently trading at a decent P/E ratio, and it’s paying above average dividends. However, I don’t think that 3M will go up substantially in 2012, it’s already trading at the before recession price.